Ask an Omaha SEO Expert: Content & Off-Page SEO

Conor Treacy

Ask an Omaha SEO Expert: Content & Off-Page SEO

When you break down the SEO process into its two main halves, on-page and off-page SEO, you might think that they’re totally different animals. On-page SEO, with optimization of page titles, meta descriptions, image alt text, and user-friendly web design, also needs fresh, valuable content for your business to thrive online. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, has generally been looked at differently.

In the past, a major pillar of off-page SEO was something called “link-building” in which you tried to get as many outside links pointing back to your site as possible, through as many schemes as you or your black hat SEO expert and budget could come up with.

As Google’s gotten smarter over the years and better at recognizing schemes meant to game the system, though, companies engaging in off-page black hat SEO techniques are getting slammed with penalties more often, sometimes to the point where domains they purchased and spent valuable time growing end up worthless. If you’ve ever seen a famous brand suddenly change its web domain, you can bet it’s because of some off-page SEO shenanigans that Google slapped down (JC Penny, Overstock, Huffington Post, etc.–they’re all guilty!).

Off-Page SEO Used to Be Easy

Link-building schemes used to be pretty easy to pull off—you’d simply go and offer to create a bunch of links to someone’s site in exchange for them doing the same for you. Search engines would see that your links had gone up and they’d raise you in the rankings accordingly. Rinse, repeat, and you’re done.

It’s not so easy to cheat like that anymore. So then what did we do? We turned to guest blogging, which used to be a legitimate practice until the spammers got ahold of it, once again trying to harvest massive amounts of links they didn’t deserve. Now Google has its eye of Sauron out for guest bloggers, too, and that practice by and large is off the table.

So, SEO expert, you’re probably asking, if we can’t buy or trade links and we can’t guest blog for them either, just how are we supposed to go about getting the links we need for effective off-page SEO? The answer lies in what we mentioned earlier, and what you’re reading right now: content.

On-Page & Off-Page Have Content in Common

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again—there’s a difference between link-building and link-earning. The latter is what you really want to be shooting for as a business, and the way you go about that is by writing the kind of content that people want to read.

The main difference between link-building and link-earning is that you can build links overnight—all it takes is a credit card and you can buy all the links you want. Link-earning, on the other hand, takes time and a well-planned long term content strategy to work. The idea isn’t to beg for links despite the quality of your content, it’s to write content that other people naturally want to link to because they think your content will help their readers as much as it helped them.

This can mean more quality links for your business and more social shares, which are two of the best indicators to tell how your off-page SEO campaign is working.

Contact Our SEO Experts Today at (402) 522-6468!

Here at Big Red SEO, our SEO experts know that developing compelling content is the only surefire way to get your business to the top of search engine rankings in the long-term. Any one of the hundreds of black hat search engine optimization companies out there can raise you in the rankings for a little while before you get slapped with a penalty, but to stay on top you need an SEO provider that follows the rules and knows how to develop the kind of content your customers love and want to share!

If you’re ready to invest in your company’s future with a company that practices only white hat SEO, give our SEO experts at Big Red SEO a call today at (402) 522-6468.

Share this post

Learn More About Our Services

Drop us a line and let’s get to know each other. Don’t like forms? Give us a call at (402) 522-6468.